Important Note: This balance update is still in testing. While you may not like the changes, please discuss them in a civil manner. If your only intention is to post here to complain about things, please do so in the Tirades thread. Posts made in THIS thread simply to complain will be deleted.

Also please don't assume information here is correct, because it could very well not be.

On kRO on July 28th Gravity set up a new test server for their Ragnarok Renewal Project. The Renewal is a full scale re-balancing of Ragnarok. The plan is to make RO more accessible to users, and more in line with modern day MMORPG's. In addition, the new mechanics are intended so that they can easily add and improve on current game content (such as 3rd jobs) without destroying game balance.

Now the renewal balance update has completed its term of closed beta testing and now available for open testing. As testing continues, gravity continues to fine tune the system and make adjustments the game.

The previous discussion thread was becoming too large and becoming difficult to sift through information, so the discussions will be continued in this thread. The old threads are still available here and here.

Physical Defense (DEF)
- Shown in the status window as "Status defense + Equipment defense".
- Status defense is gained by your own stats, and equipment defense is increased by your current equipped gears and their refine rate.
- Physical defense directly reduces a targets attack power against you. Equipment defense however reduces damage more than your status defense.
- The difference in level between you and the opponent affect how effective your defense is at reducing damage.

Magical Defense (MDEF)
- Shown in the status window as "Status magic defense + Equipment magic defense".
- Status magic defense is gained via your stats, and equipment magic defense is increased by your current equipment and cards.
- Magical defense directly reduces a targets magic attack power against you. The reduction from equipment magic defense makes up a higher % of the total reduction.
- The difference in level between you and the opponent affect how effective your defense is at reducing damage.

Attack Speed (ASPD)
- Attack speed is displayed as a numerical value, which represents an attacking speed unchanged from before the renewal patch. As your approach 200 attack speed, your attacks become increasingly fast (max aspd is 190, representing 5 attacks a second).
- Attack speed varies from job to job, and is effected by the class of weapon equipped, your Level, AGI and DEX stats, and reduced when equipping a shield.
- Stats and and equipment that affect ASPD modify it by a direct amount instead of by a %. For example, Two-Hand Quicken will give you a flat +5 aspd.
- Equipping a shield reduces your ASPD by approximately 5.

Final Accuracy
- The ability to hit or dodge a target physically is based on a ratio of the HIT and FLEE between you and the target.
- As your HIT raises above the targets FLEE, it becomes increasingly difficult to dodge. The opposite is true, if the opponent has higher FLEE than you have HIT, you will have difficulty in landing a hit.
- While the base numbers for HIT and FLEE have changed, the actual formula has not changed substantially.

Casting Time
- Cast time of all skills is now composed of two parts, a fixed cast time and a variable cast time.
- Fixed cast time cannot be reduced by any means, and represents the fastest a skill can possibly be cast.
- The fixed casting portion of all skills is set to 20% of the skills total casting time. Other than skills with a fixed un-reducible cast time, there are no exceptions to the ratio of 20%/80% fixed/variable cast time.
- Variable cast time can be decreased via your DEX and INT stats, as well as equipment and skills such as Suffragium and Magic strings.
- The cast time of skills at this time during testing have not changed (with the exception of cold bolt/fire bolt/lightning bolt).

Critical Chance (Crit)
- Your critical rate is calculated the same as before, and represents a % chance to land a critical hit, affected by your LUK and current equipment.
- Your critical rate is reduced by the LUK of the target, and reduced if the target is a higher level than you.
- Katar type weapons double the effect of the crit stat.

Perfect Dodge (pDodge)
- Perfect Dodge is no longer shown within the status window.
- However pDodge works the same as before, perfect dodge is a direct % chance to evade a normal (non skill) physical attack.
- Perfect Dodge is increased with higher luck and specific equipment.

Perfect Hit (pHit)
- Perfect Hit is not displayed within the client window.
- pHit is a direct % chance to hit the target, regardless of your hit and evasion rates.
- Perfect Hit can only be gained via special equipment.

Character Leveling

Increased Weighting on Level Difference
- Players are rewarded for fighting monsters of their own level, as well as those slightly harder.
- When in combat a player or monster that is higher level receives a bonus to their hit rate, critical rate and damage, and the lower level one faces a penalty to their evasion, and physical and magical defense. The penalties increase as the level difference widens.
- If you are lower level than the monster you are killing, you receive a bonus to your experience for your kills (+1% per level difference, with +10% bonus at 5 levels).
- A player or monster being hit by a lower level target additionally receives a bonus to their defense values.
- If you are 5 or more levels below a monster, you begin to receive a 30% penalty to your damage, hit, and evasion rates.
- If you are 10 or more levels below a monster, you will receive a 60% penalty to your damage, hit and evasion rates.
- As the gap in level widens, you'll become less and less likely to be able to deal any real damage to the target monster.

- If you are between 5-8 levels above a monster, you will receive a penalty to experience gained from that monster.
- At 5 levels above the target monster, you will incur a 50% penalty to the experience gained by killing it. Each additional level reduces the experience gained by an additional 10%, capping at an 80% reduction of the total experience.

- The level penalties go both ways, so a low level monster attacking you will also receive a penalty to their damage, hit, and evasion, and you will receive a bonus to your defense.

Experience Gain
- The experience table has been drastically changed.
- Because of wide-scale modifications to monster levels, monster experience, and the weighting of your own level, the amount of base experience required to level up has dropped drastically.
- Job level requirements are balanced differently. You are likely to hit job 50 on your first job around level 50, and job 50 on your second job near level 85-90.

Experience Chart
- The following is the current known experience requirement for non-transcendent characters, along with some samples of how much experience optimal monsters give at that level.

Monster Arrangement and Re-leveling
- The spawn of most monsters across the game world have been widely changed.
- Areas are changed so that maps generally group monsters of similar level together.
- To accommodate this, the stats, skills, and level of most monsters in game have been drastically altered.
- The adjustment in zones is done in such a way that players should always have a place to level their class within their level range.
- Some zones have been adjusted to be high end, with monster levels appearing above 100.

- Current known monster sense information can be found here.
- A map of all fields, and their respective levels are shown at the end of this post.
- A map of most in game dungeons and the levels can be found here.

Removed Maps and Map Changes
- The following maps have been removed either temporarily or permanently as part of scaling the game world. In testing, the warps to access these maps were non existent and gravity marked these maps as removed.

- The village of Umballa now directly connects to the yggdrassil tree roots.
- The map ein_fild01 now connects to ein_fild03.
- The map ve_fild04 now connects to ve_fild06.

- The entrance to the 'Ant Hell' dungeon has been moved from moc_fild20 (Crack of Dimension) to cmd_fild08 (East Fortress Saint Darmain).

Skill Balancing

Acolyte

Heal
* The amount healed for has changed. Heal is now directly influenced by your magic attack power.
* The amount healed is no longer fixed, but is a range influenced by your stats and skill level.
* Modifiers that affected heal before will still work as they did.

Mage

Safety Wall
* When safety wall blocks the maximum number of hits, a new wall cannot be placed on that cell for a short period of time.

Fire Bolt / Cold Bolt / Lightning Bolt
* The cast time of these skills has been reduced by approximately 50%.

Knight

Two Hand Quicken
* Two Hand quicken now increases your attack speed by a fixed amount.

Priest

Suffragium
* Now only reduces the variable portion of skill casting time.

Turn Undead
* The success rate of Turn Undead is changed.
* On failure the damage of Turn undead is a holy attack influenced by your magic attack power.

Wizard

Meteor Storm
* The damage of Meteor Storm is increased.

Lord of Vermilion
* The damage of Lord of Vermilion is increased.

Storm Gust
* The damage of Storm Gust is increased.
* Stormgust's chance to freeze has changed. It now is a chance to freeze per hit of stormgust. Level 1 stormgust has a 25% chance to freeze, and the chance increases at 5% per level up to 70% chance to freeze per hit with level 10.

Grand Cross
* Grand Cross is influenced by both the physical attack power and magical attack power of the user.
* Grand Cross is reduced by a combination of physical defense power and magical defense power of the target.

Assumptio
* Assumptio has been completely changed. Assumptio now increases your physical and magical defense by 100% for the skill duration. In PVP and WoE, the bonus is only 35%.
* However, skills that bypass your physical or magical defense will ignore the effects of assumptio.

High Wizard

Stave Crasher
* Stave Crasher is influenced by both the users physical attack power and magical attack power.
* Stave Crasher is reduced only by the targets physical defense.

Scholar

Soul Exhale
* The amount of SP transferable with Soul Exhale has changed. Now you cannot give a target more than 50% of their max SP with the skill.

Acid Bomb
* Acid Bomb is now influenced by the users physical attack power, the users magical attack power, and the VIT of the target.
* Acid Bomb damage is now reducable by a combination of both physical defense and magical defense of the target.

Equipment Changes

Some pieces of equipment have been changed for the renewal patch. In particular, most rods and some books now grant equipment magic attack power.

I can see complaining if you pumped AGI primarially for defense, but you don't pump AGI for defense, you do it for offense. AGI is the single greatest offensive stat for melee characters, and for characters that take it to the extreme, it also becomes a powerful defensive stat. How can you complain about that?

I beg to differ, because RKs are melee and agi is definitely not their best stat, Dex is. And after dex, Luk and Str equally. Similar rules apply to sura and smith.

Agi may be the best stat for ctrl-click melee characters, but that is pretty much just GXs.

Other than that, carry on =D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atum

The problem for me is that it should be possible to dodge hits as easy as hitting people if you invest enough in agi/equip.
Why is it so easy to hit enemies in woe but make it so hard to dodge enemies, or better : why does gravity want people to not dodge any hits at all in woe?
I put a char who was equipped for flee only, sacrificing everything else against a normal RK and even unequipped its not possible to dodge him, where is the balance there?

IMHO, the flee reduction for woe is a definite necessity. Otherwise, your average-run-of-the-mill GX is going to run around with 100% ability to dodge physical attacks. And that same GX can use a GTB shield to gain 100% immunity to magic, basically making an unstoppable force. To reduce it to being useless is rather ridiculous, also, and I don't believe gravity would take it to that extreme. Chopping down just the base flee by 25% sounds fair, but as we've seen in renewal, not all the mechanics are that simple. Flee is asymptotic, and perhaps the reduction is applied after the fact. ie: a 25% reduction is applied directly to your % chance to dodge, either by direct subtraction or 25% reduction in the current value (50% dodge - 25% OR 50*(.75)%)

By Norm? You mean back to the old one before renewal T_T Renewal was supposed to give balance, back then the "norm" is everybody is vit type and equipments are reduction cards, nobody uses flee T_T
It was the same for everybody there was no variety.

Again, 100% flee does not mean you are invinsible, there are lot of counters even if 100% flee is reached (And it is hard to reach 100% flee mind you).
By using flee equips you are forsaking defensive equipments such as anti-magic or melee.

At 100% flee, you are still hit by magic, skills ignoring flee and CRIT. There are lots of counters to this. And to get there you give up defensive cards T_T (Hunters will still hit you by the way XD that 100% flee is just mere representation of what I am saying)

Additionally flee does 2 things for magic classes like wizard:
-it increases the value of their magic and the need for skill counters since people can't normally dodge it
-it gives the more fragile classes of AB/Warlock the chance to possibly dodge physical attacks.
This update discourages them from heavy agi involvement for defensive PVP reasons.

actually it's 95% flee, 100% doesn't exist since beta RO. your flee value can also be lowered by being targeted simultaneously by more them 3 foes don't remember the exact mechanics but being aimed by 5 or more enemies lower your dodge rate considerably and something like 12 rowens will eat a 115 GX with over 600 flee(using H.Walk) alive.

So there are still other weakness to flee but we'll see, I mean, there were still plenty of people missing things in every KRO woe video where the woe reductions were already aplied, so.... yeah

__________________

Rustaway, get yours today.
Warning: do not confuse with justaway, thos things explode in your face

Edit: Rolamaster, it seems that you didn't read what I wrote, after all GX is NOT the only agi class in the whole game, you know? To THEM the flee nerf MIGHT be fair, but, to the others, it's NOT. You can't balance the WHOLE game on a single class. That's when you nerf the said class to be balanced with the rest of the game.

I agree ... they might nerf constantly in 30 % the flee ONLY of the GX's and other classes a less nerf (10~15 %). as well as they "balanced" the Rune knight giving penalties of-15aspd with shield,-10ASPD 2hs, frenzy and THQ dont stack and all the increases of aspd based on the agi deposited. completely that in order that the RK's do not reach very high values of ASPD (193) decently. all for good of the play. do you agree?

It has long been known that ragna advocates either mindlessly skill spamming or mindlessly ctrl+clicking all these years, and now finally I want to share what I think about this.
Let me first define what an offensive skill normally does, it is a move that multiplies your output by a certain amount in a very short time span, a.k.a "Burst Damage". This helps in quickly taking down your enemy, take note of the word help.
Generally enough, in DOTA or WOW, they can quickly reduce the enemies HP inorder for the enemy to have less time to counteract your damage. Although there are skills that deals sustained damage over a longer period of time.
Also take note that these skills have long COOLDOWNS, either in DOTA or WOW. This advocates the players to use the skills wisely and efficiently.
To strike a great balance between using skills and melee attack, the skills damage must never overshadow the "DPS(over a long period of time)" of the melee attacks. But do not fret, this does not mean the skills are useless.

Take for example:
You only use your melee attacks at 3 hits per second
(Each attack is 500 damage)
You do this until the enemy dies
With an enemy having 10000 HP while potting at 500 hp/s
15000hp+500hp/s(t) - 1500hp/s(t) = 0
15000hp = 1000hp/s(t)
t = 15 seconds
The enemy dies in 15 seconds

Now a scenario where you use skills in conjunction with melee (having a delay of about 1 second after the skill is used to simulate the "Lag" in ragnarok)
(Each attack is 500 damage at 3 attacks per second)
(You have two skills:
1) 500% instant and no delay skill with 20 seconds cooldown (+1 sec 'lag" time)
2) 1500% skill that has a delay of 1 sec+1sec(lag time) and has 30 seconds cooldown)
You do this until the enemy dies
With an enemy having 15000 HP while potting at 500 hp/s
Use the instant skill first then 1 sec lag the immediately use 1500% skill with 1 sec + 1 sec lag
Then immediately attack:
T = t + 3
15000hp+500hp/s(T) - 2500hp - 7500hp - 1500(t) = 05000hp + 500hp/s(t+3) - 1500(t) = 05000hp + 500hp/s(t) + 1500hp - 1500(t) = 0
6500hp = 1000hp/s(t)t = 6.5 seconds
T = 6.5s + 3s
T = 9.5 s

Meaning you killed the character in 5.5 seconds lesser time than when you did not use skills.

Note: Further rants will be made and it will be sure fired filed with proof for your reading pleasures ^_^
The enemy dies in 7.5 seconds
One of my future rants will be to advocate chaining spells XD

Just a small little question.
What will be the best MvP weapon after renewal for a champ? Will it be the over upgraded Stunner with 2 Abys cards or something else? Because the stunner is one mace with the most wp Atk.

WTF YOU CALL GX's DPS INSANE??? Look at the screen first, is "100" damage insane??? Do not talk bullshit, i don't have to waste 20M zeny just for EDP per WoE to kill.

This damn EDP should be removed from the game, not to see this type of nerving pointless speechs.

calm little buddy, it is time of your medicine =P

you hit 100 damage with your GX? then I cannot help you ... your char is 'cursed'. =P
at a little time I received hits of 4k/hit in pvp of a GX's 150 (I was not with thara and beret). if I to find it again I catch the name, I pass for you and you send PM for him ... asking "WHAT IS YOUR BUWILDY AND EKIPS PLX PLS! 11ONE!!??!!!?!" OK?

are you poor? has it no money for EDP? I'm so sorry ... try to play with classes that do not need consumable items. you can be a "medium laborer".

to delete EDP of the game? no, it is a necessary 'evil', otherwise all the GX's would be the same as you. we are going to think before about a less drastic attitude, just the nerf.

bye!

It was not me hitting "100" with the GX, if you'd follow the forum topics you'd see that but the only thing you do is talking what you have in your mind.

It's the same GX who is making 2.5k per crit in PvP which means there is a "CLEAR" imbalance on this character, at one side being pure "loser" without EDP, and at the other side being "pure" demon with EDP.It doesn't require a big logic but maybe its still hard for you, i can understand.

EDP is something questionable for sin class, it was possibly supposed to buff sin class but built wrong, a sin is not supposed to be a kind of item consumer class such as creator or proff.And the money matter, i can simply claim that its very hard to spend around 25M per WoE for most of the players.